Anime Power Rankings is a “weekly” column where dozens (positively dozens!) of anime critics and opinion givers vote on the best new episodes of anime from the past week. The goal is to track the collective opinions of online conversation leaders across the season and help readers find worthwhile shows to watch.

Week 4 Results

Rank

Title

Episode

#1 Votes

% of Ballots

Change

1

Concrete Revolutio

17

7

35.4%

+3

2

My Hero Academia

5

2

39.6%

-1

3

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable

5

5

31.3%

-1

4

Flying Witch

4

2

35.4%

-1

5 (tie)

Kiznaiver

4

3

33.3%

-1

5 (tie)

Space Patrol Luluco

5

5

31.3%

+3

On the cusp: Tanaka-kun is Always Listless (3-29.2%), Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (4-22.9%), The Lost Village (3-25%), Macross Delta (3-18.8%), Bakuon!! (0-20.8%)

Concrete Revolutio comes through as top dog this week, making the 3rd different #1 anime in just four weeks.

Voters’ thoughts:

I’m glad I caught up with Concrete Revolutio in time for Amphibious Androgynous Donald Trump to eject himself from the planet and make everyone’s lives a little more happy in the process. One can dream. Indeed, one can dream.

Concrete Revolutio continues to stand strong with a self-contained episode that lampoons the left and right side of Japanese politics, delivers a strong anti-prejudice message that acknowledges the current boundaries that make complete acceptance impossible, and features uncensored female devil boobs. Always the risk-taker this show, and it’s really astonishing just how many of said risks are paying off.

ConRevo is still hard to get emotionally involved with, but its gotten even smarter and sharper in season 2. The scene in the most recent episode of the two political factions bickering and fighting while the two gods both want to boss around watch in detached amusement might be the show’s best portrayal of political shortsightedness and authoritarian myopia yet.

The Lost Village basically had a perfect episode this week. I don’t know if you can do absurd suspense-thrilled comedy any better than this. The cast’s conversation about Catacombs Assbound was just…like…I don’t even know…

Mari Okada did an excellent job stretching 5-10min of actual content over the course of a 20min episode of Kiznaiver. Not quite Dragonball style, I was tricked until the episode ended and realized the story had failed to progress in any measurable way. A fatal blow for a 13 episode series.

I was really hoping [Joker Game] would be a sleeper hit with thrilling, historical spy antics but so far it’s been as exciting as watching a wet noodle sink. I’m not surprised that the series has chosen to have more an episodic story than a tightly focused, central plot but considering the first two episodes focused on an outsider to the D-Agency without showing much of the 8 spies at all it feels weird that the story has now completely shifted to focusing on them. Heck, I’m not even sure which spy we were focusing on this week! The story loses all impact if you can’t figure out how it relates to the larger story at hand.

Big Order is very bad and very stupid. Think Clannad~After Story~’s pregnancy via hand-holding gambit was bad? Yeah, well, Big Order saw that and raised the stakes with pregnancy from ribbon-grabbing. It then capped it with the pregnant girl going into labor roughly five minutes later. What’ll Big Order think of next?

On the cusp: My Hero Academia (1-30%), Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (3-27.5%)

Number of voters: 40

Number of full ballots (ranked 5): 33

Concrete Revolutio seems to be claiming the overdue APR glory it was denied from the lost Fall season it originally debuted in, with a second straight top finish. And only two weeks after being #1, My Hero Academia slips off of the top 5 in this extremely competitive season.

Looks like Okada has struck again, ruining characters left, right, and especially on Kiznaiver. What could have been a great hit is now moderate water-cooler talk of what could have been. Tanaka-kun continues it’s masterful control of tone though.

Flying Witch is slowly turning me into the garbage slice-of-life I Y A S H I K E I ~ bullshit fanatic I always hated and feared as an anime fan in 2009. I just watched someone follow a goddamn piece of shit cat around town for 20 straight godforsaken minutes and it ended up being more entertaining than nearly everything else this week had to offer.

I enjoy my time with Hero Academia. I want the next episode to arrive. That’s good. But I still feel as if I could be enjoying it a lot more, but it feels as if we get 10 minutes of actual content in each episode, and the pacing does actually harm the enjoyment of what /is/ there. I’d rather get 10 great minutes a week than 20 good but uneven ones.

People may (rightfully) mock Mayoiga’s general attempts at horror, but watching Nyanta’s past trauma seriously made me shaky, nauseous and short of breath – and still does if I remember it! As someone who has a fear of wasps I can’t imagine something worse, and the show made her SO sympathetic that I couldn’t distance myself from her situation. I think the fact it was all so plausibly, realistically cruel made it far, far too effective. That scene is going to stick with me for a long time.